Gallery: Ars tours the battleship USS Iowa (BB-61)

The way Iowa looked when I reported aboard in January, 1987.

US Navy/National Archives

Today is Veterans Day in the US, and we wanted to recognize the Ars readers and staff who’ve served by resurfacing former Navy man Sean Gallagher’s trip to his old home, the USS Iowa. His piece originally ran on May 15, 2015.

A few months ago, as I was planning to head out to California for Microsoft’s Build developer conference in San Francisco, I decided I needed to stretch the trip a bit further to the south—down to the Port of Los Angeles to visit the Pacific Battleship Center, the home of the battleship USS Iowa.

I served on the Iowa for two years in the late 1980s, and that experience was life-changing. But I had not had a chance to see the ship in over 26 years—my last visit had been in late April of 1989, weeks after an explosion in the ship’s second 16-inch gun turret took the lives of 47 men. Many of those who died had worked in my division aboard Iowa; others had been colleagues and friends.

So nearly 26 years to the day after I last visited the Iowa, I stepped aboard with my wife and daughter in tow, escorted by James Pobog—a former Navy boiler tech and the “deck boss” of the Pacific Battleship Center’s volunteer Iowa crew. It was a cold and rainy Saturday afternoon, making it not so ideal for photos, and some of the places I had on my list to visit were not the most photogenic and well-lit spaces aboard Iowa. But the second the smell of the ship below deck hit me—the mix of a thousand different lubricant and paint fumes, and god knows what else lingering in the spaces of a 72-year old battleship—memories started flooding back.

I’ve written about Iowa’s fire control systems in the past, and I recently recounted my experience with the ship’s use of drones. But that’s just scratching the surface of the technology that made BB-61 in all three of its “lives”—during World War II, the Korean War, and the Cold War—possible. It was one of the fastest ships of its size and mass ever built, capable of well over 30 knots; its top speed was long classified, but some have placed it at near 40 knots, or 46mph. That may not seem incredibly fast, but the ship also has a displacement of over 58,000 tons. It was a workhorse, too, doing everything from refueling other ships to sweeping for mines.

And sure, it could reliably hit targets over 25 miles away with explosive shells that had the same mass as a VW Bug.

I’ve pulled together some of the photos from my visit with other photos from my Iowa archives—some of them digital versions pulled from the National Archives’ online collection of photos I have only in bound, printed “cruise books.”

I’d be happy to take your questions about the ship and the cutting edge of World War II and Cold War technology. Fire away in the comments below, or e-mail me.

Turret one and two of the USS Iowa, triple 16-inch 50 caliber main guns. A third turret sits aft of the superstructure. The turrets individually weigh more than a World War II destroyer.

Just for scale, here are the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders performing under Turret 1 on December 31, 1987 in the Gulf of Oman. I was on the bridge above, trying to avoid a collision with a fishing boat.

US Navy

Two rounds fired from Turret 1 and 2—you can see them in the upper right of the photo—during a gunnery exercise in the Mediterranean.

US Navy

High explosive shells being loaded aboard Iowa before our deployment at Naval Weapons Station Yorktown. The shells weighed between 1,900 and 2,200 pounds, depending on purpose.

US Navy

An archive photo of one of the Iowa’s shell decks in a 16-inch 50-caliber turret. Like a giant revolver magazine, it moved shells into position to be hoisted to the gun rooms…

US Navy

…and then rammed forward into the breech. Shown here, the 1,000th round to be fired by Iowa in its 1984 recommissioning—fired in 1986. Round 2,000 was fired just before Christmas of 1987.

US Navy

The big guns were hardly the only punch the Iowa carried. From left to right: Harpoon missile canisters, the Phalanx close-in weapons system (CIWS) with the R2-D2 radome, Tomahawk cruise missile armored box launchers above, and six dual 5-inch gun mounts. The one in foreground was manned by the ship’s Marine Detachment. Oh, and the captain’s gig.

In a photo taken for the ’87-’88 “cruise book”, Mount 51
captain GM3 Scott Leach, pointer GMSN Seaman Darrin Seiger, and mount trainer GMSN Joseph Dobbins pose with one of the mount’s dual Mark 28 five-inch/38 caliber guns. Mount 51 was forwardmost in the last photo.

US Navy

Those two gray boxes above the captain’s gig and to the right of the R2-D2 radar dome of the CIWS. and the one just to the left of the second stack, are the Iowa’s armored box launchers. They carried Tomahawk cruise missiles. I can neither confirm nor deny whether any were nukes.

A photo from 1987 shows one of the Tomahawk Mk. 143 armored missile boxes opened with Marine guards posted as new missiles are loaded.

Above Turret 3, one of the ship’s four Mk 37 gun directors for the 5-inch mounts, and one of its two Mk 38 gun directors for the 16-inch turrets. The barrel radar on the Mk 38 was very distinctive—especially to the electronic sensors on Soviet ships it locked onto. At right, another one of Iowa’s Tomahawk launchers is visible.

The rest of the fire control system—and almost all of the critical systems of the ship—were far below beneath Iowa’s second deck in the “citadel”—an armored shoe box that spanned between Turret 2 and Turret 3.

Sean Gallagher

Broadway, a long passageway running the length of the citadel, hangs from the armored deck above the engineering spaces below. The rail system could be used to move heavy equipment (or even shells) from one end of the ship to the other.

P. Gallagher

At the forward end of Broadway is Iowa’s primary and secondary gun plot rooms, home to the apex of analog computing technology.

These barrel switches selected which fire control directors and which guns were in the Mark 1’s input and output channels.

The display of the Mark 1’s Star Shell Computer, which calculated the trajectory required to put an illumination round in just the right spot over a target.

The solution was passed to a fuze-setter in the turret through this barrel switch.

The power panel for the Mark 1.

The analog display of the Mark 1.

The only nod to electronics—the interface to the fire control radar on the directors.

Fuses for the servos that provided the electromechanical linkage between the computer and the guns.

The Stable Element, which also gave the plot room control over the battery of 5-inch guns.

The Mark 8 Rangekeeper, the fire control computer for the big guns.

My wife caught me hand-splaining how the stable element works to our tour guide through a portal in the wall between primary and secondary plot.

CIC as it looks today. All that’s left is the grease boards, the squawk box, and the dead reckoning table.

In 1987, the CIC was home to bleeding-edge tactical displays like this SPS-45 radar repeater.

While we used the squawk box to talk to the bridge under normal operations, much of the ship’s communications was over sound-powered phone circuits, like this one worn by an Iowa sailor in the aft repair locker.

US Navy

Speaking of repair lockers, these Tomahawk fire alarm panels are in Damage Control Central, just a few spaces away from CIC. You really didn’t want one of these to go off, what with the cruise missiles possibly carrying nuclear warheads.

More alarm panels in Damage Control Central for other things that might explode: the sprinkler systems for the Harpoon, CIWS, and various other things with magazines full of bullets and missiles and such.

Down below in Engine Room 2, these are the main reduction gears for Iowa’s second 600-psi steam turbine engine. It’s basically a 53,000 shaft horsepower transmission. Iowa has four. Do the math.

All those locks were (and are) to keep people from dropping things into the reduction gears, which would be very bad. Reduction gears were so expensive that those on some ships were actually leased by the Navy instead of owned outright.

The engine room’s control panel, where orders from the bridge were turned into turns of the shaft.

In layman’s terms. this sign means, “Disengage the parking break before driving or you will all die.”

Me, standing under the blower I hogged on the handful of watches I stood in engineering. Headroom? What’s headroom?

A small part of the crew art that decorated much of the ship, here on the main generator in Engine Room 2.

Back up above the armored deck: a passageway into X Division’s berthing compartment.

The spacious enlisted berthing compartments of the Iowa were a vast improvement over the way sailors were stacked five high in hammocks during World War II. Sort of.

Chris Nelson, USS Iowa volunteer

Command Master Chief BMCM Bobby Scott’s stateroom had a bit more room. Scott, who retired from the Navy in September of 1992, died just a month later in a freak accident; his wife donated many of his personal effects from Iowa to the Pacific Battleship Center.

Me, standing in what was once the stateroom I shared with fellow junior officer Carl Cusaac. He later made captain in the reserves.

I developed a stoop on this ship, for obvious reasons.

Hand-stamped into a work bench in the ship’s machine shop is this roll call of machinists’ mates who worked in the space when the Iowa sailed into Tokyo Bay for Japan’s surrender in World War II.

Sean Gallagher

Hand-stamped into a work bench in the ship’s machine shop is this roll call of machinists’ mates who worked in the space when the Iowa sailed into Tokyo Bay for Japan’s surrender in World War II.

Iowa had a very busy machine shop, keeping up everything that broke—including a separate motor rewind shop. In this photo from the 1987-88 deployment, Electrician’s Mate 2nd Class Bruce A. Bunnell performs a motor rewind on one of the high-pressure air compressor motors used in the recoil system of the 16-inch guns.

An informational sign by the mess line lists some of the numbers of feeding a crew of 2,500 people, the Iowa’s World War II manning. It was cut substantially in the 1980s with the elimination of the flak guns.

My wife and daughter were fascinated by the ship’s bakery—the home of the infamous battlechip cookie.

Up on the 04 level, the armored pilothouse within the bridge. It contains the ship’s helm and engine order telegraph, and a “captain’s periscope”—something I never saw a captain use.

The 17-inch armor plate surrounding the pilothouse was designed to take a direct hit from an opposing warship’s big guns. There were no guarantees that anyone inside would survive the shockwave, however.

My daughter takes command in the captain’s chair on the Iowa’s bridge.

A 1980s era encrypted radio phone receiver on the bridge. I believe the crypto keys have expired.